Latvian Bolshevik, the RSFSR's first People's Commissar of State Control, who directed the Red Terror in the North Caucasus
Born into a peasant family in Courland, he became a teacher and turned Marxist in prison; he joined the RSDLP in 1905, fought in the Moscow December uprising and wrote a History of Latvia (1908–1909). In 1917 he chaired the Minsk Soviet and the Council of People's Commissars of the Western Oblast and was elected to the Constituent Assembly. From May 1918 to March 1919 he was People's Commissar of State Control of the RSFSR. In 1920, as Cheka plenipotentiary for the Don and the North Caucasus, he set up troika tribunals that shot more than six thousand people in October 1920 alone. Suspected of links with the oppositions, he was pensioned off in 1928 and died of tuberculosis in 1937.
Also known as: Karlis Landers
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1917.10Chairman of the Minsk Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies
- 1917–1918Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Western Oblast and Front
- 1918.05.09–1919.03.25People's Commissar of State Control of the RSFSR
- 1920Cheka plenipotentiary for the Don and the North Caucasus; head of the Special Department of the Caucasian Front
- 1921Head of the agitation and propaganda department of the Moscow Committee of the RCP(b)
- 1923–1925Member of the collegium of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade of the USSR